What I've Come To Be
by UnkeptBroom
Summary: Set in a post-apocalyptic world full of death and loss. The story interweaves several plot lines for each chapter, from Naruto, to Sasuke, to other major characters that shows life after the fall of human civilization. None of these chapters have any linking and are their own separate stories.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be: Chapter 1 **

**_A Life Spent In Silence_**

He took a step and then another, making sure nothing below his feet would make a noise. With a whispered, fluid motion, Naruto Uzumaki pulled the knife from its sheath. Quiet was the key, so he wrapped himself in a shroud of silence as he approached the shambling thing in the other room: a thing that had been a man once, just like him. In a subconscious motion born from a thousand repetitions, he checked his surgical mask, making sure his mouth and nose were covered as he continued to close in on his target. As he drew near, he could see the man's eyes had turned white, could see the faint trails of mycelium just below the skin, puffing it up as it burrowed into him, stealing the nutrients they needed to survive.

The things. That's the way Naruto thought of them. He couldn't think of them as people, it was too painful and tore at his mind if he did. The thing continued to amble about, searching, listening for any noise that would give away its prey. The hard, wheezing blasts of its breath echoed against the cold marble walls and floors of the building's lobby, giving a surreal soundtrack to Naruto's approach. This one was in its final stages, the parasite collapsing the wet dark space of the host's lungs. As Naruto took the final steps behind the thing, his free hand shot out grabbing the thing under the jaw, keeping it closed as his knife slid in through the base of the skull, severing the spinal cord with a brutal thrust. Instantly, it went limp and he lowered it to the ground, using his hand still below the jaw and the knife still in its skull to bear the dead weight. The strange wheezing continued, it would for a while before the monster growing inside would let him die.

Naruto wiped the blade clean on some tissues and discarded them on the floor. He checked his skin and mask again. No open cuts and nothing out of place; he was relieved. He looked past the brass revolving door to the outside and the road he must travel; he was not pleased by what he saw. He quietly sighed at the futility of it all. When the end came, it wasn't a nuclear exchange. It wasn't a super volcano, a meteor or even a virus or climate change. It was a genetically engineered fungus. Even the idea sounded silly to Naruto, but that was before he found out about Cordyceps Unilateralis and the government's work to weaponize it. It was a fungus that in nature invaded ants and other insects. It inhabited their bodies, and as it grew and devoured them, it manipulated their actions and their brain. The infected ants were driven to find a leaf ten inches above the ground. The leaf was always north-facing and the humidity was within one point of ninety-five percent. That was how precisely it could control the insect. The ant was then instructed to fasten itself to a leaf and allowed to die as the fungus grew a spike from its brain. The spike, in turn, produced spores that rained down and infected the other insects below. It was a wonderfully gruesome and effective routine.

Someone in a high office or a sterile, white lab saw the potential for a brain manipulating fungus and tinkered where they should not. In the end, they created something that wasn't what they wanted and almost beyond their control. Instead of destroying it, they shelved it, kept it alive, waiting for the day they could figure a way to use it or refine it to fit their needs. Then something happened; it got out. It escaped and a fungus that was designed to infect humans very easily slipped from the closed and controlled environment it was imprisoned in, to a habitat ripe with food and prey.

Naruto never understood why the alarm wasn't raised until it was almost too late. Strange reports started to circulate of people becoming sick with a white fungus that grew throughout their bodies. It blinded them as it invaded their eyes; it bubbled their skin as it grew beneath it and it made the human hungry and aggressive as the spores sought to be passed on to more and more people. It even kept the host alive for as long as possible to ensure the maximum amount of offspring. Nature is by fact hyper-aggressive, as each species seeks to spread its offspring. When that trait is tampered with and specifically manipulated to increase those instincts, a disaster is born. Images of people strapping themselves to trees or skyscrapers when the fungus had finished with them weren't the most troubling part. To Naruto, that was when they started to attack other humans, rending the skin and giving the spores a chance to take hold or to feed themselves, providing the parasitical fungus with more energy.

When not in direct action, the parasite put the host into an almost suspended animation, lowering the heartbeat, breathing rate and core temperature to well below the norm for an uninfected person. They sat on the ground, their knees pulled up to their chests and arms wrapped around them, foreheads resting on their legs, listening. They reminded him of nothing more than pods of death, waiting to bloom. They were all blind, but the least noise would draw them like a moth to a flame. Natural noise like birds or thunder didn't seem to bother them but a hard click, scrape, or any metallic sound drew them in droves.

All of that hard-earned knowledge did little to comfort Naruto. He wanted to leave the building; he was traveling, searching for anything or any place that could offer him some safety. He must leave his hometown. Killing people that were once friends and family tore at his psyche along with the never ending need for silence. There were times when he caught himself about to scream, or sing or pound pots and pans together just to hear some familiar noise and end his isolation. But he held his breath; the song died on his lips, and pans were put down without a single click and he went on.

Naruto looked out past the revolving door to the rows of 'pods' that lined the sidewalk. He contemplated the silent macabre dance he would have to perform just to navigate the street and start his endless journey to a safe place he doubted existed. But he had no choice. If he was going to lie down and die, he would have done it long ago. So Naruto took a step and then another, making sure nothing below his feet would make a noise and walked out into a profound and weary silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be**

_**Shopping**_

Most of the world didn't notice the apocalypse. Sure there were a few raccoons that starved when the garbage ran out, but for the most part the world went on just fine. The humans on the other hand were in real trouble.

Sasuke Uchiha snorted to himself as he walked down the city street. He leaned on a stick as he walked. It was half support and half weapon. He'd finally found something useful in the library aside from paper to light fires and learned to fix a knife on the end of the length of curtain rod that had become his spear.

Harriet would be miffed if he took too long getting back. Since he had to live with her, he didn't want to deal with her emotional fits. He turned into the grocery store and looked at his list. He pulled out a shopping cart and started piling cans into it. He was always the one to do the shopping since they'd run out of money. Harriet insisted that they pay for everything.

He maneuvered the cart around the skeletons in the aisles. That was another thing that upset Harriet. She figured that they all should be getting a Christian burial. Never mind that there was hardly room in the cemeteries for them all. He had made the mistake of asking her how they were to tell which ones were proper baptized Christians and she hadn't talked to him for days.

It wasn't like Harriet was even the last woman on earth, or even in the city, but the older ones were looking for strong breeding material. Even on his good days Sasuke didn't look like strong breeding material. Sure he has his looks, but his ever since his brother's accident he has tuned out from the world. Not like this _world_ has anything beneficial to give him. Doc over on the other side of the city had suggested that the planet had just got tired of the humans crawling all over her and sent out the waves of disease that had reduced population levels to prehistoric levels. That had annoyed Harriet, since she didn't believe in prehistory, but she had just looked disapproving as Doc had set Sasuke's leg and put it in a splint.

Sasuke finished his shopping and pushed the cart back toward the brownstone house where he and Harriet lived. He limped a little more on the way back, but it was better than trying to carry the food. She'd make him return the cart tomorrow.

The city was losing the battle with the rest of nature. Vines grew on skyscrapers and trees pushed their way through the cracks in the asphalt. He could hear the scuttling of small creatures as they went through their lives as if the glass and concrete were just rocks and hills. They might as well be for all the good they were now. Sasuke knew that there were old people who climbed the stairs to explore the heights, but there were enough who didn't come back down to convince Sasuke it wasn't worth the effort.

Everything they needed could be found on the ground levels. A day's food for five million people went a lot further with just a thousand or so. That's how many humans Doc figured were still living in the city. Harriet listened to the talk of things that weren't human that haunted the night. She wouldn't hear of him going out after dark.

"Hey kid."

An old man that Sasuke didn't recognize stepped in front of him. Sasuke could feel the presence of two more behind him.

"Thanks for bringing me food."

"There's lots of food," Sasuke said and leaned on the cart.

"Yeah, but this is here right now….and I'm hungry." The old man made a show of whining and looking weak. Sasuke heard laughter from behind him. Hoary and not too bright, he thought.

"This is mine," Sasuke said, "If I have to go back to the store, I'll be late and Harriet will be mad."

"Why should I care about what some old bag thinks?" The old man stepped forward and put his hand on the cart. "You haven't met Harriet." Sasuke heard more laughter from behind him.

"Fuck off kid and give me my food!" the old man snarled and pulled at the cart. Sasuke let it go and the aged man was off balance for a second. That was long enough for Sasuke's stick to whip around and connect with the old man's solar plexus.

He went down coughing and cursing. Sasuke turned around and waved the pointy end of his stick at the two behind him. One of them actually fell down as he backpedalled.

Sasuke completed his turn in time to see the old fool trying to draw a gun from his waist band. He used the blunt end of his stick to knock the gun spinning away. He glanced at the other two, but they were keeping a respectful distance. Neither looked like they were reaching for a weapon.

Sasuke walked over to the gun and picked it up. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. It was a lot easier to find guns than the tools to care for them. He dropped the gun in his cart.

"I suggest you walk the other way, you sad excuse of a human being," Sasuke said, "Harriet don't hold with killing, but..." He just shrugged and let the sentence die out. The old man pushed himself to his feet and cursed at his friends when they tried to help him.

"This is the new world kid," the old man said from a safe distance. "We aren't going anywhere. You'd better watch your back."

"It seems all too much like the old world," Sasuke murmured and started pushing the cart toward his home. He stopped briefly at a convenient sewer and dropped the gun down into the darkness. The altercation with the old strangers had slowed him down enough that darkness fell before he reached his home. He wasn't sure whether it was raccoons, rats or the mythical unhuman denizens of the night, but he could hear plenty of rustling just outside of his sight. He was more than pleased to reach the old brownstone that he called home. He pushed the cart through the doors and shouted up the stairs.

"¨"Harriet, I'm home."


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be**

_**Trust**_

Gaara Sabaku woke with sun in his eyes. A bird sang. He stretched and sat up. A breeze stirred the branches around him. The air was warm and the leaves a deep green. Gaara swung his legs over the edge of the platform he had built high in the tree and sat there listening to the morning sounds in the forest. The platform swayed with a gentle motion beneath him.

He got up and pulled on his cammies. Threw a couple of cans in his pack for breakfast and checked the load in his rifle. He lowered the rope ladder and climbed down to the forest floor. It was a long climb. His hidden nest was lost in the overhead foliage. No one was going to surprise him up there.

He secured the ladder to the trunk of the tree in shadow and hiked over to the ridge. He sat down on a log to eat his breakfast while he checked out the town below. He saw the teenage girl slip into the Oaks Market to forage. The couple with two children made their way down Main, guns ready, and entered the department store after listening at the door for at least five minutes. Gaara saw smoke rising from the picnic area in the park south of town. That would be the young couple who had arrived a month ago.

He didn't see the grandparents and their granddaughter or the boy who was ten or so. The grandparents slept in, he knew. The boy seemed to like it better at night.

These few who remained in town were all cautious. Except for the ten-year-old boy. He was feral.

Gaara heard the sound of an engine, for the first time in weeks. He stood up and dug his binoculars out of his pack. A car appeared at the end of Main and came forward, in no hurry. It stopped in front of the hardware store. A man got out, armed with a shotgun. A woman got out the other side. Rifle. Two kids, from the back. Handguns. Like the family now in the department store, they listened outside the hardware store for a long time before entering. Gaara was already running down the path off the ridge, to catch them before they left.

He followed Oak down to Main and took up position in the middle of the intersection, trying to catch his breath. When the family came out of the hardware store, half a block away, Gaara raised his arms and hailed them. His hands were empty and open.

The four froze at the sound of his voice. The father and both kids brought up their weapons and aimed them at him. The mom faced in the other direction, rifle up, scanning the street and the windows in the buildings on both sides back that way.

"Stand clear," the father said to Gaara, loud enough to be heard. "Stay where you are and we'll run you down."

"I'll move when you start up," Gaara said. "If you're just passing through, have a good trip. If you might be staying, I thought I'd tell you who's here already."

The man glanced back at his wife.

"Clear so far," she said.

"Keep your hands up," the man said to Gaara.

Gaara told them about the family of four in the department store, and the young couple on the edge of town. He told them about the teenage girl, and the grandparents and their granddaughter, and the ten-year-old boy.

The mother turned her head from time to time to look at him. Blank expression. Dangerous. The children seemed tense but curious.

"So far," Gaara said, "no one here has trusted anyone else enough to team up with them. We're all on our own. I live out in the woods. If you choose to settle here, you won't be bothered by a welcome party."

"We'll take that into account," the man said.

"One other thing," Gaara said. "I'm organizing a little experiment. I don't know if anything will come of it, but I've invited everyone in town to a sort of meeting. At noon, day after tomorrow, at the park. There's a large playing field. We'll all arrive separately, of course, and position ourselves around the edge of the field, far enough apart so that everyone feels safe. Then we'll all move forward until we're as close to each other as we can tolerate."

"What's the point?"

"We see each other every day. We're all just trying to make our way. This would be a time to exchange names and stories. Maybe mention some problems we could use advice about. Maybe set up another meeting."

"Nobody would risk their kids," the man said. "I'd come alone, if I came at all."

"There would be four couples," Gaara said, "three with kids, if everyone came. And then the teenage girl and the younger boy. And me, of course. Maybe everybody wouldn't come, but if anybody came, anybody at all, it would be a start."

"You get a bunch of folks armed and nervous out in an open field, they might start sharing something other than their names."

"That's the point of everybody staying at a distance they feel safe," Gaara said. "Hell, we can shout to each other if we have to. There are seven youngsters. At least they'd get a look at one another. We'll make sure everybody has a chance to speak."

"We'll think about it," the man said. "We talk about how to join up with others all the time. But you don't know who you can trust. You could be gathering everybody up to get rid of them."

"And be alone?" Gaara said.

"Yes."

Returning to the ridge, he settled down to watch. Spring had settled in. Time to start a garden. He'd need to hide it and guard it, wouldn't he? A community garden would produce more for everyone.

The new family remained in town. With children involved, the parents had so much more to gain, but also to lose, if they trusted somebody else.

Two days later, Gaara left his pack and his gun in the tree. He walked down to town wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, unarmed for the first time since death and chaos claimed the country.

He arrived at the park early, but, to be safe and to avoid ambushes, so had everyone else. Without direction, they automatically spread out around the field. Everyone was there. Only Gaara was unarmed, but that didn't bother him. The presence of the children was a good sign.

The sky was clear, the sun bright. Two crows argued on the roof of a gazebo in the overgrown public rose garden beyond the field. Gaara noticed a doe standing at the edge of the woods.

He walked to the centre of the field and gestured everyone in. They came forward slowly, eyeing each other, pausing, until they formed a loose ring around him. Gaara felt tension in the group but also something else.

"We don't have trust yet," he said, "but we're here. We're together. We have hope."


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be**

_**Greening The Earth**_

Neji Hyuga and I sat at The Bar on Sunset drinking Ice Bombs. The atmosphere was lugubrious, if it's possible to have an atmosphere with only two souls left alive in Hollywood.

"Explain to me again how a superior galactic government could order the death of almost seven billion humans," I said.

Neji shrugged.

"It happens," he said. "It was a political thing. At least I saved you."

"Being alive isn't so special when everybody you know is dead," I said.

I got up and walked over to the window. Stared across Sunset at the old Warner studios. Trash littered the pavement at the deserted Mobil station next door.

"Hey, there are still fifty or a hundred million humans on the planet," Neji said.

"Sounds like a lot, but try getting a date with one of them."

Neji had worked as a greensman at Universal. He was a specialized set dresser who dealt with plants, real and artificial. Sometimes he reported to the art director and sometimes directly to the production designer. He had a green thumb. Literally. He lived in Glendale, like I did at the time.

"Where are they, all these millions still alive?" I said.

"Indians in the Amazon, what's left of it…Wild men in Borneo, what's left of it…Mountain dwellers, those who haven't drowned since the ice melted. Folks who did the least damage to the planet. And you, of course."

Neji and I used to meet at The Bar after work. Dark and noisy. In the summer we'd drink those Ice Bombs, which I can still recommend if you don't mind drinking alone: blue raspberry vodka, orange vodka, plain vodka, and Sprite. And lots of ice, of course.

One night during that period of our friendship, Neji admitted to me that he was an alien. An alien.

"If you're an alien, why don't you keep it a secret?"

"Why should I? Nobody cares."

"INS might."

He laughed.

"Are you kidding?," he said. "Neji Hyuga from Japan and raised in Brooklyn? The guy the studio loves for his great sets?"

"What about picking up women?"

"Hasn't hurt me….that I can notice. To tell you the truth, they get it in their heads that they'll uncover the equipment and point to it and say, _Looks pretty human to me, ha ha_. But then when the moment of truth arrives, their mouths drop open and they say, _you're right. That thing ain't human!"_

"So what are you doing here? On Earth, I mean. Besides dressing sets with ferns and palm leaves. Invading the planet?"

Again he laughed.

"Who'd want to invade this dump?" he said.

"Hey, you're talking about Hollywood here. Maybe Brooklyn's not so hot, but show a little respect for the industry."

Neji was shaking his head.

"You've turned your planet into a crock pot. What self-respecting alien would come down here and invade Detroit, for Christ's sake."

"So then what? Are you studying us? How are we doing?"

"In what respect?" Neji said.

"In the respect of advancing as a race. Of developing, evolving, reaching the point where we can zip around the galaxy or whatever, hanging out like you are."

"Ninety-nine per cent of sentient races become extinct within, oh, a few thousand years of their initial technological breakthroughs."

"That doesn't sound good."

"Humans are way too smart for their own good," Neji told me. "They should have got smart slower, much slower, over hundreds of thousands of years. You're too much animal to survive, being this smart. You'll come to an end quite soon, in one of the thousands of ways that you've developed, on purpose or inadvertently, to kill yourselves off. It's one of the reasons that Earth is so popular as a vacation spot. A visitor like me can act like an animal here, be quite bestial, quite instinctual, and yet still hang out with smart people. Nobody wants to take a vacation at the zoo...

It makes me giddy just to think about it. When I come here, I can abuse drink and drugs, I can watch senseless, mindless acts of violence on film and TV and on playing fields and on the street. I can litter! I can drive around in cars spewing carbon, flicking my cigarette butts and beer cans out the window. Anything goes.

"Believe me, when I go home to a sane galactic civilization, I immediately start counting the days before I can come back. It's like when you run down to TJ on a weekend to behave badly. I'll be depressed for years after you've blown yourselves up, or poisoned yourselves, or screwed the pooch some other way. No pooch screwing on my planet, sad to say."

This news should have been depressing, but, after all, the human race invented the Ice Bomb, and the two of us drank enough of them to laugh off the whole thing, at least for that evening.

But all that was before some environmental bunch in the galactic congress decided to save Earth from its human vermin. The alien-vacation lobby wasn't strong enough to save the planet as a playground for the dissolute of space.

At least the virus that killed everybody also caused the dead to decompose quickly into environmentally friendly matter, so that I wasn't stumbling over a dead body every step I took. But Hollywood? Empty. Ditto all of L.A. Jeez, the freeways were great. Silver lining.

"What are you still doing here, anyway?" I asked Neji. "The Earth party is over."

"I bought a package," Neji said. "I pre-paid for the next fifty years. No refunds."

"Isn't that a little long for a vacation?"

"You don't expect beings from a superior galactic race to take a two-week vacation, do you?" he said. "Even the French do better than that."

"Most of us don't get born and die on our vacation."

"One of our vacations seems like a lifetime to you," he said, "but for us they're all too short."

"Ok, but there's nobody here."

"There are still a hundred million humans on the planet. Come on. We're bound to find a party somewhere. I understand that a group was spared up in the north of the state. A commune in Mendocino Country. Let's drive up and check it out. Drugs, free love, vegetable gardens. Maybe we won't miss Hollywood once we get there."

"I'm a screenwriter and a dialog coach. What am I going to do in a commune?"

"You've been in rehab a couple of times, haven't you? Think of it like that, only without having to give up all the things that you like. On the contrary. There's enough drugs and liquor left in the world to last your lifetime."

"So what you're saying is road trip."

"We'll drive up in a Maserati. I saw one parked down the block."

"Why not a nice big RV?"

"Are you kidding? It's only five hours to San Francisco. Less, with a hot car and no CHIPs. We'll find a good motel in the Bay Area, with a generator. Or, we could fly up. I can handle a plane."

"Let's drive," I said. "You're too drunk to fly."

"OK. Let's go discover America."

**Note: INS stands for Immigration and Naturalization Services.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be**

_**A New Beginning**_

_The front door swung open and Hinata Hyuga walked in. Kiba goggled at her, the prettiest girl in school, dressed in her cheerleader uniform. His mouth moved, but he didn't seem able to form words; a mindless "ahh, uhh" was the limit of his vocabulary at the moment. She was across the room in an instant, and her finger pressed against his lips silenced him. She looped both hands around his neck and tilted her face up to his. Those eyes, he could spend days just staring into them. She leaned in, as if for a kiss and he closed his eyes and moved his lips toward hers. Then she licked his cheek._

Kiba Inuzuka awoke and pushed the dog away from his face. "Darn it, Akamaru, it was just getting to the good part!" Akamaru sat back on his haunches and looked up at Kiba as if to apologize. "It's okay, boy. I'm not really mad." The dog leaped up again, tail wagging. How could Kiba be mad at the only friend he had left? That thought brought him perilously close to other thoughts he wanted to avoid. His mother and father, his older sister...no, he would not cry.

Since Akamaru was not going to let him sleep, he got up and went to the pantry. There wasn't much left; he was going to have to leave soon. He unconsciously glanced out the kitchen window into the backyard where three crosses and three mounds of dirt marred the once immaculate lawn. Kiba fought back the tears.

He tore his gaze from the window and tried to focus. He knew he couldn't stay here much longer. The lack of food was only part of the problem. The gangs were worse. He had barely avoided a group of looters on his last venture outside. The screams from the kid who hadn't still haunted him. And there was the smell; the rotting garbage, backed-up sewers, and decomposing bodies. "We've got to get out of here, Akamaru."

After a bowl of dry Captain Crunch he made his way upstairs. From the back of the hall closet he pulled the big hiking backpack he hadn't used since he quit scouts three years ago. Dad had promised to take him hiking, but there never seemed to be time. Now there never would be.

Kiba filled the pack with all the food and water he could fit, along with a can opener, a box of matches, and a flashlight. Akamaru ran between Kiba and the front door; somehow he always knew when they would be going outside. "Wanna go to Grandpa's, boy?" Kiba harboured little hope his grandfather had survived the plague, but the little farm downstate had to be better than the city.

Running out of excuses, Kiba ran through his mental list, trying to think of anything else he might need. "Clothes! Geez, Akamaru, how could I forget that." After a few more trips up and down the stairs, and several rearrangements of the contents, Kiba could think of nothing else to add. He shouldered the backpack and groaned at the weight of it. Maybe all those cans weren't such a good idea.

As he headed back to the kitchen, the sound of the doorbell startled him; the pounding noises that followed terrified him. The hairs on Akamaru's neck stood up and he growled toward the door. Kiba patted the dog without taking his eyes from the door. Had they found him already? He crept silently toward the door, wishing for a better weapon than the baseball bat leaning against the wall. Akamaru stayed close by his heels, his growling had changed to a quiet whine.

Kiba moved toward the sidelight next to the door. He was afraid to look, and afraid not to. If they didn't see him, maybe they would think the house was empty and just go away. When the knocking came again, Akamaru, having found his courage, barked. Well, now they knew.

Figuring it was better to know than not, Kiba took a step and looked out the sidelight next to the door. His relief at not finding a murderous horde was almost overwhelmed by his shock. Hinata Hyuga looked in at him with a mixture of fear and hope in their eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** _I guess this is the part where I have to say I don't own Naruto. I don't own Naruto._

**What I've Come To Be **

_**The Horror**_

I dwell in what used to be a city saturated with a couple million humans. I've seen three this season. They didn't strike me as nice people, not that it matters. Surviving _The Horror_ was a matter of chance. Enduring the bitterness and loneliness and darkness that followed took, well, experience. If I had to describe the world as it is now to someone from the before times, I'd say just knock over any structure above forty feet and cover it all with weeds and cats. (Incidentally, if there are enough cats in one area, they swarm. No one knew that before.)

When people meet, it's customary to stay together for a day or so, eat, exchange useless goods and useless news, and part ways. There's never real news to report.

No one talks much. A long time had passed since I heard anyone start a conversation pondering why things happened and what could've prevented this and that. I thought those people had faded. There was one exception-about two years ago-a stranger so attached to the past, all he could do was reminisce and ask questions.

He roamed the barren landscape in search of society and fellowship, permanently disappointed by finding unending apathy. Probably dying from whatever sickness he brought with him, he suffered a rather sudden downturn at our meeting. It was then that I decided to give him the greatest gift any surviving human could ever receive: Answers. More like…_The Answer_. Mind you, this wasn't a charitable act, and there's no way I would've shared anything were I not so sure his end was near. Truth be told, I needed an audience to help me condense my thoughts.

"Back when _The Horror_ was first unleashed," I told him as he lay weakly on a makeshift cot inside my shelter, "people thought the worst was over. Television news broadcasted aftermath footage, book-ending commercials with darker versions of their network jingles-the careful balance of not-too-sad and not-too-catchy. Flags waved in slow motion under graphics. Leaders gave speeches while everyone scrambled to find the most memorable way to trademark the date as if already envisioning annual ceremonies and bumper sticker quips. When the shock reporting waned it was time to call in experts to assess the economic burden of recovery."

The man tried to interrupt with a recollection. I waved a finger didactically and continued.

"_The Horror_ spread. Looting, rioting, fires here and there. Remember? Cops on the streets. Celebrities dashing to the rescue and to tell us how to feel and where to donate. And why were people glued to TV and radio? To find blame. Blame a country. A political party. Anything. Life is so much easier when someone else can tell us where to focus our insecurities."

I looked at the stranger coolly. "Whom did you blame?"

He broke eye contact and said nothing. I laughed.

"Remember when _The Horror_ hit during that big live event with… what's-her-face… that talk show woman? You've thought she was Pearl Harbor in heels. The world continued to burn and all eyes were fixed upon the procession of a single casket. Sponsors bid for the rights to advertise during the live coverage. It got worse, of course, and people celebrated-actually celebrated-as countries manifested blame into battle. Allegiances fell as armies and fleeing population's trampled borders. Humanity was threatened and what did humanity do? Divide and attack itself until it was defenceless against the real threat. When _The Horror_ was unleashed it was humanity that knocked over the rest of the dominoes, right? Not until they all fell did we truly panic. You see, most wield that word in utter hyperbole. '_Panic_.' Panic isn't a rush to find a way out. Panic is what you do when you find there ISN'T a way out."

The fading man struggled to operate his hoarse voice.

"But... I already know these things," he managed.

I stared at him for the longest time. What pitiful anticipation must have hid behind his glassy gaze. His breathing steadily became more shallow. I leaned in, responding with a whisper in his ear so delicate it danced in the air without tone or colour.

"Then maybe you understand why I unleashed it."

I cleared my throat. A blink. He was still alive. I misjudged my capacity for dramatic timing.

"You look simply awful." I handed him a flask of water. "When's the last time you ate something that didn't meow?"


End file.
